Human Rights Watch denounces U.S. sex-offender policy

In a 146-page report on sex-offender policy in the United States, Human Rights Watch concludes that the nation’s sex-offender laws don’t protect children from sex crimes very well, but they do lead to harassment, ostracism, and even violence against former offenders. Read the report…

The New Hampshire Citizens Union to Reform Sex Offender Registration (NH-CURSOR) is an organization that seeks to educate and inform New Hampshire citizens about our state’s sex-offender registry laws, how they both overreach and fall short of their goals, and what we can do about it. We recognize that not everyone registered as a sex offender is an actual ongoing public safety threat, and instead of perpetuating “feel-good” solutions that simply don’t work, we seek to bring real, evidence-based solutions to the table in order to deal with sex-offender issues. Our focus is the ineffective restrictions and regulations that waste taxpayer dollars and actually serve to undermine communities’ abilities to effectively protect themselves. This is not to say that we are completely against sex-offender registries as a whole—but what we are against is the broad brush approach that sweeps all offenders into the same basket. We do not sympathize with violent child molesters or predatory rapists. But we do understand that not every registered sex offender is indeed a violent molester or rapist, and we hope to educate and inform other New Hampshire residents as to this important fact about sex offenders and sex-offender registries.

We had a strong presence at the Statehouse this term, building on the good work of Laurie Peterson, who founded CURSOR and served as the first New Hampshire coordinator for the national organization, Reforming Sex Offender Laws. Laurie stepped down because her job hours and responsibility increased, she has to travel a lot now, she has a family, and she’s going to law school. Our cause needs future attorneys like her who understand the witch hunt against sex offenders.

A dozen of our advocates persuaded the House to kill two residency restriction bills against people listed on the state sex offender website. One would have banned this group from living within 25 miles from their victim or from any relative of the victim. That‘s a good example of the mindless vindictiveness behind every sex offender bill in about the last two decades. The bill had no grandfathering clause for folks with established homesteads to hang onto. It would have driven most of New Hampshire’s ex-offenders to Maine or Vermont. Nor could a sex offender near parole have gotten the parole board to release them. How could somebody behind bars ever locate the victim, not to mention their grandparents, nieces, kids and brothers? An inmate is prohibited from contacting his victim.

The other extremely hostile bill would have excluded the same electronic scarlet letter wearers from living in most towns. They could not have resided within 2,000 feet of a school or daycare program. Lawmakers were aware a lower court last year struck down the Dover sex offender ordinance with a 2,000-foot perimeter from such places. It violated the plaintiff’s basic property rights.

A bill to encourage active notice when a sex offender moves into a neighborhood died on the Senate floor after sailing through the House. Two of the Senate co-sponsors turned against their own piece of legislation after hearing our side of the issue. They understood the bill would have fomented vigilantism by spurring towns to compete with each to give the harshest welcome to an unwanted new family.

The bill’s prime sponsor, Sen. David Boutin (R-Hooksett), filed the bill last fall right after a Hooksett man on the registry was charged with molesting his niece. Police later dropped the case, but a local vigilante website against the accused man, Joel Dutton, and his family still carries death threats. The bill sponsor testified about the heinous crime that prompted his legislation as if it actually happened. That blunder cost him his bill.

Unfortunately, our legislation to ban residency restrictions altogether died in the Senate. It won a huge majority in the House and left its senate committee with 5-0 support. Democratic leaders made the decision behind closed doors to table it as being too controversial in an election year. We hope this year’s improvised coalition against residency restrictions will give the same bill strong legs next time. Opponents of such restrictions included the Coalition against Domestic and Sexual Violence, Child and Family Services, the Manchester Police and the Department of Safety.

The governor has signed a bill we worked hard for, the justice reinvestment act. It allows nonviolent inmates to parole sooner than now and lets everyone leave prison at least nine months before their maximum term expires. The bill vastly improves parole supervision too. The savings on prison costs will divert to community programs to prevent recidivism and crime by rehabilitating parolees. For now all sex offenders are still arbitrarily defined as violent offenders. We’ll be working to change that definition.

The governor has signed a bill to bar registered sex offenders from ever contacting their victims. Our side won an amendment to let the offender approach a victim within the family to discuss inheritance or custody matters.

We supported a new law to study the parole board. Many lawmakers accurately suspect this benighted and powerful agency is out of step with reducing prison costs. Our side needs to testify at the upcoming hearings and workshops on an issue vital to an intelligent criminal justice system.

Lawmakers killed a bill to evaluate the public danger posed by everyone on the public registry. There was strong bipartisan support for the concept, but nobody knew where to find $4 million or so to assess the 2,700 people already on the burgeoning roster.

A House bill to let folks on the registry file petitions to get off died early in the legislative session. The idea was too radical.

The governor has signed a feel-good bill to make folks on the registry report to the police their cars, boats, snowmobiles and planes, say where they are kept and divulge the license numbers. The offenders don’t have to display neon pink plates yet.

This summer the House will study the public sex offender registry in depth and the cost of complying with the federal Adam Walsh Act, a deeply flawed law mandating these registries in every state. Many of the reps have reservations about what is devolved into a highly punitive shaming roster. According to a solid body of research, the list does nothing to protect children and may paradoxically endanger them the same way residency restrictions do- by making a lot of them jobless, divorced and homeless. Our people will need to speak up at the meetings of the study commission this summer and fall. Stay tuned for the schedule.

CONCORD - The State Senate this month tabled and killed HB 1628, a bill to encourage police to actively notify the neighbors whenever a sex offender is released into their midst. A dozen opponents, including several sex offenders, had packed the senate public hearing on the legislation.

In response, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 3-1 to kill the bill politely by sending it to interim study in an election year. Senate interim study committees never meet in election years. A co-sponsor of the bill, Sen. Sheila Roberge (R-Bedford), sits on the Judiciary Committee and voted to effectively defeat her own legislation after hearing the evidence against it.

There was no debate on the later Senate floor motion to table. Whatever infighting led to that surprise outcome happened behind closed doors. After the vote, one senator said people were worried about the consequences to the families of sex offenders if neighbors got into the habit of welcoming every sex offender harshly.

The stakeholders were expecting an emotional floor fight in the full Senate. Sen. Robert Letourneau (R-Derry) missed the committee vote, but he co-sponsored the bill and would have voted for it. Close split decisions are rare in senate committees and often lead to donnybrooks when all 24 senators meet. Each of them received an email from me the night before the final vote with a copy of an op ed I had just published in the daily Laconia Citizen. The full text appears at the bottom of this update.

I’m sorry to say the Senate killed HB 1484 the same way, a bill that would have barred towns from imposing residency restrictions against sex offenders. I heard conflicting reasons from senators and sources close to the governor for the surprising vote to table this fine legislation. It had sailed through the House and left Senate Judiciary Committee with a 5-0 ought-to-pass endorsement. We’ll be asking the sponsors to resubmit the same bill for next year, if they get re-elected.

Losing this favorable legislation was palatable in an election year. Only five towns have adopted these residency restrictions, and several have chosen not to enforce them in light of a district court decision last August. It shot down the Dover residency restriction against sex offenders as a violation of fundamental property rights. No town with an ethical legal counsel will be foolish enough to pass a new residency restriction with the Dover decision on the books. It’s not a binding precedent, but it might as well be.

But never say never in politics. If some town considers passing an ordinance like that, you will hear about it on CURSOR in time to oppose it.

An Op Ed in the Laconia Citizen May 12, 2010

We are losing the war on sex offenders

Community Commentary

By Chris Dornin

But not the way you think. The stereotype of the mean stranger watching the schoolyard underlies the last two decades of sex offender laws. Ironically, these feel-good, knee-jerk statutes endanger the very kids they aim to protect.

State Sen. David Boutin (R-Hooksett) is sponsoring House Bill 1628 this spring to encourage police departments to use active public notice when sex offenders are released into a neighborhood. He filed the bill to please constituents hoping to drive all the sex offenders from Hooksett. Joel Dutton, a man on the sex offender registry, had been charged with a new sex crime. When Dutton made bail, his neighbors started a website against him with these and similar comments:

"You show true restraint by not beating the tar out of this lowlife." Chris Johnson

"I hope you guys get rid of the bastard. What a piece of crap." MTgirl

"This is an incestuous family of whack-jobs and psychopaths, and it makes me feel good to know they are going down." Steve

"Hang'em high and let the sun set on em. Only in a perfect world right? Haha" Josh T

Boutin echoed those feelings in his Senate testimony. "Late September of 2009 a convicted child sex offender heinously struck again and was charged with felonious sexual assault against a 7 year old Hooksett girl," Boutin told lawmakers. "Quick adoption of this bill and dissemination of notification guidelines to local law enforcement will go a long way towards preventing another sexual assault, with regrettable consequences for the victim, family and community, who all share in the burden of the pain."

There was much more to the story. The prosecutor has dropped the case against Dutton for lack of evidence. A neighbor had accused Dutton of molesting his own niece, who still lives with Dutton, his wife, and his brother in law.

States like Pennsylvania and New Jersey evaluate all their sex offenders for threats to the public and save active notice for the worst of the very worst. That lifelong punishment after incarceration can include mass emails, newspaper ads, wanted-style posters, and hostile PTA meetings. Those states also have strong safeguards against vigilantism. In the last decade dozens of registered sex offenders have been murdered.

These laws shame the very group of ex-cons least prone to do another crime. The recidivism rate for new sex charges against registered sex offenders is averaging about 1 percent per year in state after state. Likewise, the research says more than 95 percent of sex crimes are committed by people who have never been convicted before, usually the loved ones of the victim. Between a third and half of the offenders against kids are teenagers or younger themselves.

The middle school in Hooksett had a bizarre episode of active notice this winter. Jennifer Frank, a visiting detective from Plymouth State University, displayed student Facebook pages in front of the whole school. Some belonged to the children of local sex offenders. Then she posted their fathers' Internet mug pages from the state registry. Charles Littlefield, the Hooksett superintendent, confirms that these children were "traumatized." Steve Harrises, the principal, says he was "blindsided" by the assembly.

Something worse happened when Frank went to Fall Mountain High School. Steve Fortier, a school parent, gave this testimony at the Senate hearing on HB 1628. Fortier is not a sex offender, by the way.

"Many of the sex offenders whose information was shown (in front of the school) are family members of teens who were sitting in the audience," Fortier said in written testimony. "Because most youth sexual abuse is committed by a family member or someone else known by the victim, there was an even more troubling consequence. Many of the victims of the sex offenders were watching the assembly. This retraumatization, including the stigma associated with being a teen sexual abuse victim, was, in my opinion, not worth whatever gains were made through the assembly."

Other Fall Mountain parents have said kids ran out crying and stayed away from school for days. One couple has asked the Civil Liberties Union to represent them in litigation.

The hysteria sweeping New Hampshire against sex offenders has already reached a critical stage. Hostile neighbors drove convicted child murderer Raymond Guay from Manchester to Chichester to New Hampton last year. Along the way he stayed with the family of Pastor David Pinckney, whose parishioners gave the ex-offender meaningful handyman jobs to do. Pinckney told senators that men like Guay can assimilate safely back into society.

"I would welcome him back in my home," Pinckney testified.

Mobs gathered outside the apartment of registered sex offender Gloria Huot in Manchester a couple of years ago. People burned dolls on her wooden porch, according to news reports. Huot shared the apartment with another woman and her kids.

John Crawford, a former Laconia State School resident on community placement, was bludgeoned to death in 1981. Three former State School residents were awaiting trial on molestation charges. Rumors that Crawford was a sex offender had spread through his neighborhood before his murder.

A man at NH Prison stabbed two sex offenders in Concord and tried to burn an apartment building with seven sex offenders. The Maine vigilante who killed two sex offenders in 2007 was coming here next. After his suicide, police found a New Hampshire hit list on his computer.

Nobody can identify the very few predatory child rapists among the 2,700 mug shots on the New Hampshire registry. Judging by registry data from other states, most are incest offenders at low risk to commit a new crime. Some are husbands stung on the Internet without an actual victim. Some are drunken college guys who misunderstood a no for a yes. Some are former Romeos with 15-year-old girlfriends. Those are all criminals, I'm not minimizing their crimes, but they were well punished in prison. Few will recidivate. No one can tell if the folks branded by the registry have families to share the horrors of active notice.

None of the names comes with a clinical risk score. On line they all look bad. If HB 1628 becomes law, bullies will follow the children of sex offenders. Some will lose their jobs. Landlords will evict some of them. Some could become those mythical strangers watching the sandbox from the shadows.

Chris Dornin is a retired Statehouse reporter and religious volunteer into N.H. Prison working for criminal justice reform.

The Senate voted April 29 to table HB 1484 banning towns from using residency restrictions against sex offenders. The legislation sailed through the House and seemed like a slam dunk after the Senate Judiciary Committee backed it 5-0 last week. That was a ringing non-partisan vote. But not so fast.

Sen. Lou D’Allesandro, D-Manchester, made the tabling motion, which passed without debate in a unanimous voice vote. Whatever caused that crash of a superb piece of legislation took place outside the Senate chambers away from public scrutiny in a place founded on the principle of open government.

D’Allesandro said afterward some senators had expressed concerns about a related court case. He would have meant the Dover District Court decision last summer striking down the city’s 2,000 foot buffer zone around schools and daycare centers. The city was trying to evict the plaintiff, Richard Jennings, a registered sex offender. The court found the ordinance violated his fundamental property rights even though he was a renter.

Sen. Sheila Roberge, R-Bedford, said the tabling motion came from the Senate Democrats. The Republicans were surprised by it. Sen. Deborah Reynolds, D-Plymouth, chairs the Judiciary Committee and echoed D’Allesandro. Some unnamed people were worried about the bill.

That’s where things stand for now. We don’t know who those people are. I won’t be able to get over to the Statehouse in person again until next week to learn more. Two Democratic sponsors of the bill, Reps. Beth Rodd and Mary Stuart Gile, are trying to find out what happened and let us know what we can do to save the bill. They’ll be talking to Senate Democrats. It’s too soon to speculate further.

What you can do about HB 1484

A simple majority vote of the Senate can still remove a bill from the table. That rescue gets harder near the end of the lawmaking term. The time is now to call, write, email and meet with your senators to urge them to revive and pass this important bill. Just tell them how the bill would affect you. Be sure and let all five-members of the Judiciary Committee hear from you as well. You can find out how to reach your local senator at http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/senate/senatemembers.asp.

The New Hampshire House last week passed the finest piece of criminal law in decades by a lopsided 256-57 vote, ignoring the benighted advice in a recent editorial by the publisher of the Union Leader. SB 500 would let nonviolent inmates leave prison at or near their minimum sentences and start parole with a decent chance to stay clean, sober and crime free. Today large numbers of prisoners fail parole at their first and even second and third chances. Many max out and hit the streets homeless and broke. They soon return to prison, some having harmed new victims.

We as a penny-pinching, humane society can stop that revolving door by using half a dozen simple, research-based policies contained in SB 500. These best practices have lowered crime rates, prison costs, parole costs and recidivism rates in states like Texas and Kansas long known for being harsh on criminals. SB 500 gives parole and probation officers the power to bust a consenting person back into a halfway house for up to five days without a court or parole hearing.

That mild, but immediate, sanction should steer most ex-cons back to compliance without losing their hard-won jobs, apartments and new stake in a law-abiding society. If that intervention fails, the person would go into a halfway house for 90 days of intensive rehab. Today, about the only tool in the parole officer’s kit is a court petition to send someone back to prison or jail for the rest of their maximum sentence.

Under SB 500 almost all inmates would hit the street at least nine months before the end of their maximum sentences. That’s to assure the high-risk parolee the greatest possible support when leaving the safety of the cellblock for the perils of freedom.

A 180 degree change in vision like this was unthinkable even a year ago. But the prison population has grown 31 percent in the last decade, while yearly correctional costs have spiked from $52 million to $104 million. If future legislatures agree to it, most of the projected savings from closing selected prison units starting as soon as 2013 would go into community treatment programs and better supervision.

The Center for Public Policy Studies has forecast a prison population of 3,029 by 2015 under the current growth trend. If SB 500 succeeds as hoped, that census would drop from 2,878 now to 2,422 five years out. The Strafford County contract to house female state prisoners would end in 2013, saving $750,000 per year and $2.3 million by the end of 2015. Closing one pod at the Concord prison and the unconscionable, makeshift dormitory with 100 cots in a gymnasium at the Berlin prison would save $3.2 million in salaries by 2015.

The state would save another $5.3 million in cumulative marginal costs for food, clothing, medical care and inmate payroll from jobs in prison industries. Throw in the avoided $37 million construction cost of another wing at the Berlin prison if the state ever needs to build it, plus those future operating expenses. Some years from now the state might need a whole new prison, without SB 500.

Few pieces of legislation have emerged from such good planning. A team of consultants from the National Association of State Governments gave lawmakers an in-depth analysis of data culled from our prisons, jails, courts, probation departments and parole offices. These experts were assisted by NH Charitable Foundation and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the US Justice Department. Focus groups took input from victims’ advocates, the judiciary, defense lawyers, parole officers, the executive director of the parole board, prison planners, police chiefs, the association of counties, prosecutors, jail superintendents and other stakeholders.

The sponsors of SB 500 include Senate President Sylvia Larsen, House speaker Terie Norelli and key leaders in both parties who sit on the committees that handle crime legislation and pay for it. They’ve all shown tremendous vision and some political courage. The Justice Reinvestment Commission behind the bill met for eight months. More than a score of key policymakers vetted the advice of the consultants, including the three court chief justices, legislative leadership, several state department heads, the governor’s office, top managers from the Department of Corrections, and the attorney general as chairman.

The state has won $1 million in federal seed grants to fund the first phase of the Justice Reinvestment project before the savings kick in to sustain it. Lawmakers did well to seize the resulting once-a-generation, fleeting chance to save some money, rebuild the lives of offenders, ease some dangerous prison crowding, keep parolees safely out of prison and reduce the crime rate. That sounds almost too good, but it’s actually happening elsewhere. Do the math. It costs more than $30,000 a year to incarcerate someone. Community supervision costs pennies on the dollars we’re spending now.

The alternatives were ugly. California tried to jail its way out of a crime problem and built so many prisons it can’t pay for them now. Thousands of inmates are going free without any premeditated plans to manage them in the community. It’s a desperate experiment in wholesale dumping.

Chris Dornin is a retired Statehouse reporter working for smarter criminal laws.

Here’s the good news. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 5-0 on April 20 in favor of HB 1484 to keep towns from using residency restrictions to banish sex offenders. A dozen policymakers, people on the sex offender registry and other folks working for smarter criminal laws warned that these ordinances are unconstitutional. Worse, they make sex offenders homeless, drive them underground, destabilize them, and, paradoxically, endanger kids. The full Senate may vote on the bill next week. If it passes and the governor signs it, it would repeal the existing housing codes against sex offenders in five Lakes Region communities. Those are modeled on the Dover sex offender ordinance a lower court struck down last August.

The bad news? The same Senate committee may support a dangerous piece of legislation, HB 1628, to actively publicize the arrival of a sex offender in a neighborhood. The unintended, or perhaps intended, result of HB 1628 would be the same as for residency restrictions.

A group of plaintiffs is even now organizing a class action lawsuit against portions of the public sex offender registry. HB 1628 might help to assure it wins. More on the impending lawsuit another time.

Back to HB 1628. The prime mover behind the bill is Sen. David Boutin of Hooksett, who has been stirring up his voters for months against a local registered sex offender, Joel Dutton. Boutin, also a selectman, told the Senate committee his bill emerged from a Hooksett Selectmen’s meeting last fall. Angry citizens were demanding residency restrictions to drive away people like Dutton, who had allegedly committed a new sex crime that month. In response, Boutin filed HB 1628 authorizing the Department of Safety to give local police voluntary guidelines to use in notifying the new neighbors when a sex offender is released from prison. The Hooksett police are already telling the neighbors when any sex offender arrives, whether from prison or Manchester or Pembroke.

“Thousands of kids each year are attacked by sexual predators,” Boutin testified on his bill. “On Sept. 9 a seven-year-old girl was assaulted by a sex offender. The neighborhood was enraged and asked for our help. The key is to notify the neighbors. The bill is not intended to incite people to do illegal things. It’s a measured response to a heinous crime.”

Boutin neglected to mention one thing. The prosecutor has dropped the case against Dutton, removing the immediate excuse for Boutin’s legislation. But the neighbors still run a vigilante website with death threats like the following rants against Dutton and his family:

“Hang’em high and let the sun set on em. Only in a perfect world right? Haha” Josh T

“I hope you guys get rid of the bastard. What a piece of crap.” MTgirl

“This is an incestuous family of whack-jobs and psychopaths, and it makes me feel good to know they are going down.” Steve

“You show true restraint by not beating the tar out of this lowlife.” Chris Johnson

A Hooksett public school was the scene of a similar incident with active community notice. Jennifer Frank, a visiting police detective from Plymouth State University, ran a recent assembly on Internet safety at the Cawley Middle School. She displayed some embarrassing student Facebook pages, including ones belonging to the children of local sex offenders. Then she posted their fathers’ Internet mug shot pages from the State Police registry. The whole school instantly understood what had just happened. Kids are computer savvy.

Two of the parents involved in the outing have told this writer they are considering a lawsuit. The Cawley principal, Steve Harrises, and his superintendent, Charles Littlefield, have both confirmed that youngsters were publically exposed as the children of sex offenders by an officer of the law representing a tax-funded teacher training institution. “They were traumatized,” Littlefield said. Harrises said he was “blindsided” by the assembly.

Active notice can get meaner than that

Something worse happened when Det. Frank gave much the same presentation at Fall Mountain High School. Steve Fortier, a concerned Fall Mountain parent, submitted this written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on HB 1628. Fortier is not a sex offender, by the way. Here is what he told lawmakers.

As with all laws passed by our elected officials at both the state and local levels, sometimes there are unintended negative consequences that are a by-product of good intentions. As it relates to your consideration of HB1628, I have recently experienced a traumatic and troubling by-product of active notification of sex offenders. Officer Jennifer Frank of Plymouth State University recently presented her "Many Faces of Facebook" assembly at my daughter's school, Fall Mountain Regional High School.

During the presentation, Officer Frank showed pictures and biographical information (address, etc.) of all convicted sex offenders in our region. On the surface, this might seem like a reasonable step aimed at keeping kids safe. However, there were a lot of negative by-products below the surface.

First, many of the sex offenders whose information was shown are family members of teens who were sitting in the audience. Second, because most youth sexual abuse is committed by a family member or someone else known by the victim, there was an even more troubling consequence. Many of the victims of the sex offenders were watching the assembly. This retraumatization, including the stigma associated with being a teen sexual abuse victim, was, in my opinion, not worth whatever gains were made through the assembly.

Given my experience with this assembly, I urge you to consider other ways a community member can learn of valid safety risks posed by sexual offenders. Given the wide-range of crimes that fall under the banner of sexual abuse, the research that suggests that most sex abuse is committed not by a stranger but by a family member or someone else known by the victim, and what I understand to be ever-increasing success rates in the treatment of sex offenders, I am concerned that active notification will produce more negative consequences for all involved while doing little to improve public safety.

Thanks for your thoughtful consideration,

Steven J Fortier

76 River Street

Alstead, NH 03602

835-2808

Some Fall Mountain parents are considering a class action lawsuit unrelated to the two mentioned above. People have also complained to the president of Plymouth State and to an investigator at the attorney general’s office. Both state officials have acknowledged receiving that information.

The incurable flaw in HB 1628

Philip Horner, a former New Hampshire paroled to Vermont, submitted written testimony urging senators to base public notification on a rigorous risk assessment of each sex offender. Only the most dangerous people should undergo the extreme measure of active publicity, he suggested. Here is an excerpt from his testimony.

In its current form, the registry makes no attempt to evaluate risk of recidivism. The registry's three "tier" system (required for compliance with the federal Adam Walsh Act) is unhelpful, being based solely upon the RSA under which an offender is convicted.

Plea bargains often reduce, and overzealous prosecutors frequently inflate any correspondence between the actual criminal act and the RSA under which an offender is ultimately convicted. The RSA's do not correlate with risk of re-offense or recognize any rehabilitative efforts made by the offender since his/her conviction. Any true evaluation of individual risk would involve establishing a means to evaluate offenders on a case-by-case basis, as other States have done.

HB 1628's reliance on the Department of Safety is misguided. The Department of Safety is ill-equipped to evaluate offender risk, having no expertise in this area. The Department will undoubtedly feel obligated to treat all registrants equally (or to rely on the registry's flawed three tier system) and, I fear, recommend community notification for all. This will unnecessarily raise public fears for those registrants unlikely to re-offend and bring public humiliation down on their families. New Hampshire should have as a goal the successful reintegration of ex-offenders as law-abiding citizens. Across the board public notification will make that nearly impossible.

What HB 1628 will do is encourage vigilantism. Former sex offenders will be pressured to move out of their homes, and their supportive families will be vilified along with them. The recent hoopla in Hooksett will be repeated over and over again across the state. I do not think that the State of New Hampshire wants to be characterized by such behavior. Please do not recommend HB 1628 for passage.

Horner addressed the core issue with HB 1628.It has the wrong state agency deciding who deserves a highly punitive welcome to a community. Since all the faces on the registry look the same, all will get equal harsh treatment. That’s human nature. Voluntary guidelines will do nothing to restrain it.

A proposed amendment below calls for an assessment of each sex offender by the department of corrections. But Jeff Lyons, a spokesman for the agency, said it lacks the resources to do proper evaluations with so much at stake.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairperson Deb Reynolds cut all the testimony short on HB 1628. She also prevented half a dozen opponents from speaking, including several sex offenders who had summoned the courage to take a high profile. She ended this writer’s statement before he could submit the amendment. Here it is in full.

Dornin Amendment to HB 1628

To Be Presented April 20 to the Senate Judiciary Committee

Please replace House Bill 1628 in its entirety with the following amendment:

AN ACT establishing procedures for neighborhood notification upon release of a sexual offender.

ANALYSIS

This bill requires the commissioner of the department of corrections to develop rules governing the decision to use active notification of the immediate neighbors when an unusually dangerous sex offender is to be released into a community. The bill also requires the commissioner of the department of safety to develop rules to govern the implementation of that active notice process. Finally, the bill creates the new felony crime category of vigilantism against a sex offender or his or her immediate family members.

STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

In the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Ten

Be it Enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court convened:

1 New Paragraph; Neighborhood Notification of sex offenders released from incarceration. Amend RSA 651-B:7 by inserting after paragraph VI the following new sections:

VII. The commissioner of the department of corrections, no later than 6 months after the effective date of this paragraph, shall develop rules for deciding which sex offenders in prison are so highly dangerous that their future neighborhoods might need special notification that those inmates will be released.

Communities shall use the extreme measure of active community notice only on sex offenders found to be highly dangerous by the department of corrections, using clinical criteria. These shall include consideration of the inmate’s criminal record, treatment record, assessments, evaluations, educational and vocational record, disciplinary reports and rehabilitation progress.

The department of corrections shall inform the offender at least one year prior to his or her expected release date of the intention to recommend active community notice of the offender’s release into a neighborhood. The department of corrections shall give the offender a statement of the reasons for using active notice, including all risk factors that make it necessary. The offender may appeal that decision within prison channels. If dissatisfied with the result, the offender may appeal to a Superior Court.

The department of corrections must show by clear and convincing evidence that the sex offender is highly prone to commit a new sex offense in the community. As a group, sex offenders have extremely low recidivism rates, and the strong presumption is that active notice will be rare because it has such adverse consequences to the offender and his or her family.

VIII. The commissioner of the department of safety, no later than 6 months after the effective date of this paragraph, shall develop rules to govern the active neighborhood notification of the impending release from prison of a highly dangerous sex offender. Local police and officials shall not use active notification on any sex offender unless the department of corrections has determined that person is highly dangerous. Otherwise, the passive internet public registry shall be the only notification to citizens. Local police may never use active notification on a sex offender being released from a sentence that did not require incarceration in the prison system.

If local police choose to use active notification of neighbors, the method they employ shall be the most humane, least intrusive and least injurious possible. Active notification shall never include the following and similar cruel and unusual means of alerting the public:

Meetings of groups of public or private school students or their parents to discuss specific highly dangerous sex offenders.

Wanted-style posters on telephone poles.

Community access television shows about an individual sex offender.

IX. To protect against citizen abuses of privilege of active notice, it shall be a Class B felony for any citizen to engage in vigilante activities against sex offenders, including harassment, stalking, threatening or bullying the sex offender or his or her family members because of the sex offense.

2 Effective Date. This act shall take effect 60 days after its passage.

A competing and maybe better amendment

Attorney Mike Iacopino, a lobbyist for the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, submitted a similar, but more rigorous, amendment.

Iacopino Amendment to HB 1628:

HOUSE BILL 1628

AN ACT establishing regulations for neighborhood notification upon release of a sexual offender or offender against children.

ANALYSIS

This bill requires the commissioner of the department of corrections to develop rules pursuant to RSA 541-A, governing notification of the public pursuant to RSA 651-B:7, IV (c) sex offender or offender against children is released into a community. The bill creates an extended term of imprisonment for offenses against sexual offenders or offenders against children where the offense was committed because of hostility towards a sexual offender or offender against children because of that status.

STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

In the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Ten

Be it Enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court convened:

1 New Paragraph: Neighborhood Notification of sex offenders released from incarceration. Amend RSA 651-B: 7 by inserting, after paragraph VI, the following new sections:

VII. The commissioner of the department of corrections, no later than 6 months after the effective date of this paragraph shall, pursuant to RSA 541-A, develop rules for determining when and under what circumstances public notification pursuant to RSA 651-B:7, IV (c) shall occur.

(b) The rules shall require that the department of corrections shall inform the offender at least three months prior to his or her expected release date of the intention to recommend public notification of the offender’s release. The rules shall require that the department of corrections give the offender a statement of the reasons for recommending public notification, including all risk factors relied upon. The rules shall allow the offender to appeal the decision to the commissioner. If dissatisfied with the result, the offender may appeal to the Supreme Court pursuant to RSA 541.

(c) In order to allow public notification the rules shall require clear and convincing evidence that the sex offender is at high risk to re-offend in the community.

(d) The rules shall also include provisions to provide for the safety of a sexual offender or offender against children who is released subject to public notification. The rules shall include, at a minimum:

(d) The rules shall also include provisions to provide for the safety of a sexual offender or offender against children who is released subject to public notification. The rules shall include, at a minimum:

(1) A prohibition on the use of leaflets and posters;

(2) A prohibition on community meetings called for the purpose of identifying an individual sex offender or offender against children subject to public notification

VIII. Law enforcement officials and all public officials may employ public notification pursuant to RSA 651-B:7, IV, (c) only with respect to sex offenders or offenders against children that the department has found, consistent with its rules, to be at high risk to re-offend.

f) Was substantially motivated to commit the crime because of hostility towards the victim's religion, race, creed, sexual orientation as defined in RSA 21:49, national origin or sex, or because the victim was a registered sex offender or offender against children.

3. Effective Date. This act shall take effect 60 days after its passage.

Absent an amendment, lawmakers are asked to approve a still-secret plan to notify neighborhoods when a sex offender arrives. The bill does not even call for review of those undisclosed guidelines by the Joint Legislative Rules Committee. Lawmakers would enact policy in private, but they would deny basic privacy to the traumatized children of people who wear scarlet letters. At least those letters are not yellow yet and stitched to sleeves.

Work for Smarter Criminal Laws

State House Alert Number Nine • April 12, 2010

By Chris Dornin

Residency restrictions on sex offenders harm kids

Please testify at a Senate hearing April 20 at 2:30 PM in room 103 of the State House for a bill that bars towns from imposing residency restrictions against sex offenders. The legislation, HB1484, runs counter to a 20-year American tradition of rushing sex offender laws to signature while the community still grieves a major crime against a child. The act of legislation becomes almost a memorial rite while the rage is fresh and the voters remember.

That’s where statutes named for Adam Walsh, Megan Kanka, and Jacob Wetterling came from. Florida’s draconian sex offender law passed without serious opposition in June of 2005, three months after the back-to-back lurid murders of Sarah Lunde and Jessica Lunsford. A dozen states soon copied the Florida lead, including New Hampshire.

Powerful Florida lobbyist Ron Book pushed a related residency restriction through his state legislature with little opposition after he learned his grade-school daughter had been raped repeatedly, threatened, and physically abused by her live-in nanny for several years. The resulting statute, based on one horrific case, had nothing to do with the law it triggered. Several New Hampshire towns have copied that residency law.

Here’s an unwritten and dubious rule of State Houses. Reps and senators show weakness, even disrespect for victims, when they ponder too long the possible costs and bad results of a sex offender bill. But the research is abundantly clear. One of the worst practices is a residency restriction against New Hampshire sex offenders like the Dover ordinance found unconstitutional last August. In the first year it drove most of the registered sex offenders elsewhere.

Work for Smarter Criminal Laws

State House Alert Number Eight • April 11, 2010

By Chris Dornin

Mark April 20 on your calendar, the showdown on sex offender bills. All of our freedoms are at risk.

The Senate Judiciary Committee hears citizen testimony the afternoon of April 20 on two House bills that would have huge impact on all registered sex offenders and their families. You who are reading this need to be there to stand up for their rights and your own.

The public hearing starts at 2:30 PM in room 103 of the State House for the best sex offender legislation in years, HB1484. You should plan to arrive half an hour early to make sure you have a seat. Hearings on other less crucial crime bills will begin at 2:00 PM.

Why is HB1484 so important? It would stop towns from passing residency restrictions against people on the Internet public registry run by the State Police. The Dover District Court decided last August that a similar city ordinance against sex offenders violated basic property rights. The bill easily passed in the House with support from the Manchester Police, the Department of Safety, Child and Family Services, and the Coalition against Domestic and Sexual Violence.

The very next hearing in room 103 is for HB1628, meant to give neighborhoods the green light to drive sex offenders and their loved ones out of town by shunning, stalking, and shaming them. Two police chiefs have told me privately they fear HB1628 could get sex offenders killed amid the widespread hysteria against them. It will ramp up the pressure on an unpopular minority already tyrannized by the majority.

CURSOR has been relaunched in order to track the 2010 sex offender bills. We’re happy to announce that Chris Dornin has come on board to cover these bills for us. Chris is a prison volunteer, a former prison counselor, and a retired N.H. State House reporter who covered these and other issues for years.